Association

AIBTM to Leave Baltimore

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by Matt Alderton |
June 19, 2012

After two years in Baltimore, the Americas Meetings & Events Exhibition (AIBTM), which opened today, will leave "Charm City" in 2013, organizer Reed Travel Exhibitions has announced. Beginning next June, the show will rotate, instead, between Chicago and Orlando: Choose Chicago will host AIBTM from June 11-13, 2013, at McCormick Place, while Visit Orlando will host it June 10-12, 2014, at the Orange County Convention Center.

According to RTE, moving and rotating AIBTM will "offer all stakeholders access to new business opportunities in two key gateway cities that are themselves major hubs of the meeting industry."

"We want to acknowledge and thank the great city of Baltimore for its invaluable contribution to AIBTM," said Craig Moyes, director of RTE's IBTM Global Events Portfolio. "We want to especially extend our gratitude to Tom Noonan and his team at Visit Baltimore who have helped drive this event since its launch. We look forward to our continuing relationship with the City of Baltimore."

Although losing AIBTM is a major blow to Baltimore, it's a big win for the event, which will now be positioned for future growth: Although Baltimore has just 9,000 hotel rooms, Chicago has more than 35,000 and Orlando approximately 116,000.

"Following the lead of many associations in the U.S. that move their events to a different place each year, we will now have the flexibility to maximize the enormous potential delivered to AIBTM by both Chicago and Orlando," Moyes said.